Electronic Prescription Service

The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) is a NHS service. It gives you the chance to change how your GP sends your prescription to the place you choose to get your medicines or appliances from.

What doses this mean for you?

if you collect your repeat prescriptions from your GP you will not have to visit your GP practice to pick up your paper prescription. Instead, your GP will send it electronically to the place you choose, saving you time.

You will have more choice about where to get your medicines from because they can be collected from a pharmacy near to where you live, work or shop.

You may not have to wait as long at the pharmacy as there will be time for your repeat prescriptions to be ready before you arrive.

The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) involves the electronic transmission of prescriptions safely and securely from your Doctor to the Pharmacy.

You can nominate any pharmacy or dispensing contractor who is able to offer the service. You do not have to nominate a pharmacy close to your doctors surgery.

Once you have nominated a pharmacy your prescriptions will be sent there automatically when they are generated by your doctor.

You can decide not to use your nominated pharmacy for a individual prescriptions but you must make this clear to the prescriber (otherwise it will automatically be sent to the nominated pharmacy or dispensing appliance contractor).

You can set, change or cancel your nominated pharmacy or appliance contractor at the doctors surgery or any dispensing contractor at any time; even if you are part way through a repeat dispensing cycle, in which case any prescriptions which have not been downloaded before the change of dispenser will be accessed by your new nominated pharmacy or appliance contractor.

Usually your nominated pharmacy will be able to obtain the electronic prescription in advance so that your medicines will be ready when you go to collect them. You may opt to have them delivered to you.

if you go to a different pharmacy (without changing nomination beforehand) there may be delays in accessing the electronic prescription.

You may choose to have a paper prescription instead of an EPS electronic prescription. However, if this is the case nomination cannot be used.